If you want to start making 3d animations like Monsters inc and Polar Express and you do not have any idea where the start is. Here are a few pointers, you must keep in mind. First of all You should resolve upon a program for doing digital 3d animation that you may work with. So what is the best computer animation software for you? There is Maya,LightWave and Houdini that can be recognized as to be high end. Unfortunately these programs have a high price and in case you don’t know if you will animate for living. I doubt you will have 1200 USD to spend on this tools. So is there an alternative? There are cheaper animation tools like hush animation master and cheetah 3d. There are amateur animation programs like poser where a real newbie can produce animations, besides this there are open source programs like Blender. Moonlight 3d is a mighty 3d animation suite that has a lot of mighty sculpting tool-set and can be applied in large animations the same as 3ds max, Modo 3d and Softimage. After you have your program you will have to discover a number of 3d tutorials and expend large amounts of time studying and polishing your abilities. When you will like learning how to animate you will most probably have grand results.